Undine eBook

“You must know, my own love, that there are
beings in the elements which bear the strongest resemblance
to the human race, and which, at the same time, but
seldom become visible to you. The wonderful
salamanders sparkle and sport amid the flames; deep
in the earth the meagre and malicious gnomes pursue
their revels; the forest-spirits belong to the air,
and wander in the woods; while in the seas, rivers,
and streams live the widespread race of water-spirits.
These last, beneath resounding domes of crystal,
through which the sky can shine with its sun and stars,
inhabit a region of light and beauty; lofty coral-trees
glow with blue and crimson fruits in their gardens;
they walk over the pure sand of the sea, among exquisitely
variegated shells, and amid whatever of beauty the
old world possessed, such as the present is no more
worthy to enjoy—­creations which the floods
covered with their secret veils of silver; and now
these noble monuments sparkle below, stately and solemn,
and bedewed by the water, which loves them, and calls
forth from their crevices delicate moss-flowers and
enwreathing tufts of sedge.

“Now the nation that dwell there are very fair
and lovely to behold, for the most part more beautiful
than human beings. Many a fisherman has been
so fortunate as to catch a view of a delicate maiden
of the waters, while she was floating and singing
upon the deep. He would then spread far the
fame of her beauty; and to such wonderful females
men are wont to give the name of Undines. But
what need of saying more?—­You, my dear
husband, now actually behold an Undine before you.”

The knight would have persuaded himself that his lovely
wife was under the influence of one of her odd whims,
and that she was only amusing herself and him with
her extravagant inventions. He wished it might
be so. But with whatever emphasis he said this
to himself, he still could not credit the hope for
a moment: a strange shivering shot through his
soul; unable to utter a word, he gazed upon the sweet
speaker with a fixed eye. She shook her head
in distress, sighed from her full heart, and then
proceeded in the following manner:-

“We should be far superior to you, who are another
race of the human family,—­for we also call
ourselves human beings, as we resemble them in form
and features—­had we not one evil peculiar
to ourselves. Both we and the beings I have mentioned
as inhabiting the other elements vanish into air at
death and go out of existence, spirit and body, so
that no vestige of us remains; and when you hereafter
awake to a purer state of being, we shall remain where
sand, and sparks, and wind, and waves remain.
Thus we have no souls; the element moves us, and,
again, is obedient to our will, while we live, though
it scatters us like dust when we die; and as we have
nothing to trouble us, we are as merry as nightingales,
little gold-fishes, and other pretty children of nature.

“But all beings aspire to rise in the scale
of existence higher than they are. It was therefore
the wish of my father, who is a powerful water-prince
in the Mediterranean Sea, that his only daughter should
become possessed of a soul, although she should have
to endure many of the sufferings of those who share
that gift.